Policy paper

Introducing the Government Commercial Function (GCF) Strategy 2026-29 (HTML)

Published 7 April 2026

1. Introduction

Each year, the public sector spends more than £400 billion buying the goods and services that keep the country running. This spending keeps our citizens safe, builds important public assets - schools, railways, roads, hospitals – and delivers essential front line public services ranging from supporting our justice system to enabling our welfare and tax systems. The Government Commercial Function (GCF) directly manages approximately £90 billion of this annual spend.

The GCF was formed in 2015 and incorporates around 6,000 people working in commercial roles, predominantly within central government departments and some Arm’s-Length Bodies (ALBs). The commercial teams in departments are supported by a central team based in the Cabinet Office which drives the strategy delivery, sets commercial standards and drives continuous improvement against them; and is responsible for the UK government’s policies and legislation on public procurement, both internationally and domestically. Leadership of the Function extends across all central government departments, with commercial leaders in each taking responsibility for developing and executing their respective organisational priorities, while aligning them to the Function’s vision and the priorities set out in this strategy. Andrew Forzani, the Government Chief Commercial Officer (GCCO), is the Head of the Function and is responsible for shaping and leading the programme of commercial reform across government. They lead our Central teams as well as the Function as a whole, and report to Ministers on our team’s progress.

We recognise that there are opportunities to make commercial activity across the public sector more efficient, effective and better co-ordinated to deliver the government’s missions and support the Industrial Strategy. As part of this, on 1 April 2026, commercial expertise from several of the Cabinet Office’s Central Commercial Teams and Crown Commercial Service joined to form a single, integrated agency - the Government Commercial Agency (GCA). The GCA is a self-sustaining Trading Fund, an Executive Agency of the Cabinet Office and an active constituent part of the Function. It is led by Sam Ulyatt, as CEO, with oversight from Andrew Forzani (GCCO). The GCA will play an important role in delivering our new strategy, becoming the centre of commercial expertise and service delivery for the government and the wider public sector. By harnessing collective commercial expertise, the GCA will support departments with their most important commercial issues, creating greater efficiency.

The GCF extends across the four nations of the United Kingdom and the pillars of activity are designed to have a material impact across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. GCF includes all staff within the central Government who are working on commercial activity. Our strategy is inclusive of Wider Public Sector bodies including Local Authorities.

The Grants Profession as a distinct Function has a separate strategy for 2026-29. The GCF will liaise with Grants to ensure that the two strategies enable us to strengthen the connections between the two Functions. This is important as we are united in pursuit of getting the best outcomes from our commercial/ spend activity.

As the GCF, we will create greater value for the nation.

Our Purpose: Why we are here

The GCF Strategy has an important role, acting as an ‘umbrella’, providing strategic direction, risk mitigation and general workforce planning across Government’s commercial ecosystem and its three principal groups:

• The newly established Government Commercial Agency (GCA)
• Central teams in the Cabinet Office (known as Government Commercial & Grants Group)
• Commercial teams across Other Government Departments (OGD’s), Wider Public Sector including Local Government

Strategy: How we will achieve it

Our aim is to create a cohesive, supportive Commercial Function. We will seek to increase our sense of Functional identity via collaboration on: risk mitigation, decision making and workforce planning, enabling us to collectively deliver value for the nation.

Our strategy is more than a vision; it is a commitment to operational excellence and greater collaboration to ensure a comprehensive and seamless capability offer and set of standards across the board. The strategy builds on many existing workstreams (e.g. digital, capability, innovation) currently limited to individual departments with little wider Functional read across. It aims to develop current work into three pillars of activity which can benefit the whole Function, taking away duplication of effort. To ensure that we successfully fulfil our commitments, we have highlighted six critical Strategic Enablers designed to transform our ambitions into measurable impact:

At the centre of this evolution is our People and Culture, fostering an empowered, high-performance environment where talent and capabilities thrive. Utilising and unlocking potential with leading Data insights and the frontier capabilities of Digital and AI, ensuring we are moving with the technical climate, creating efficiencies and removing duplicative processes, which will support our people in delivering the best for the Function. To ensure accountability and agility, these efforts are underpinned by rigorous Governance and Transparent Processes that demystify how we work. Finally, because no goal is achieved in a vacuum, we prioritise Collaboration across all facets of the Function. Together, these enablers create a cohesive ecosystem that drives efficiency, innovation, and long-term value.

Our Values: How we behave

We will listen, respect and reflect the interests of all the groups in the Function. We will bring clear, fair and transparent leadership, making the Function more than the sum of its parts.

2. Our Vision: What we want to be

The GCF offers everyone operating within it a common vision, goals and deliverables. This strategy will provide coverage and support in the Wider Public Sector, including Local Government and Trusts.

Our aim is to: create value for the nation. We will do this through being a leading Commercial Function that drives economic growth, builds resilient and sustainable supply chains, fosters a skilled and agile workforce and collaborates effectively to deliver innovative, value-driven outcomes faster for government and citizens.

3. Creating Value for the nation: Our Strategy to 2029

The new GCF strategy act as an umbrella, providing overarching and cohesive direction for three core components:

• The Government Commercial Agency (GCA)
• Cabinet Office central teams
• The wider Government Commercial Function, comprising Government departments and Wider Public Sector, including Local Government.

This strategy is designed to tackle the great deal of recent change. We have been innovative in our approach in order to fully accommodate Government priorities towards a targeted focus on economic growth. This strategy therefore represents a sea change in our way of operating, embedding the GCA and creating a more cohesive whole.

Through this strategy, we will help bring about three strategic shifts:

1. Elevating our People: Increasing people capability & skills, with core digital recommendations and a clear statement to the Function of the ambition and scope to upskill.
2. Working more collaboratively: Delivering a pan-Government category approach, in pursuit of key HMG priorities (promoting growth) harnessing digital, data and innovation. Digital & Data: Increasing digital procurement/ commercial practices; harmonising systems and processes; digital and data strategy.
3. Being innovative and ambitious in pursuit of our principal political priority - economic growth. As part of this, developing our Operating Model: Enabling departments to be more joined up and use some of the services in GCA (e.g. commercial categories and common goods and services)

Practically, the new GCF Strategy will effect a transition from a siloed (departmental) approach, to a collective leadership model that leverages the scale of the GCF to deliver better value, career opportunities, and economic growth to Britain.

Pillar	Theme	Outcome Title	In Support of Strategic Shift
Pillar One	People	A Capable, Inspired Workforce whose talent is nurtured	Elevating our People
Pillar Two	Collaborative Delivery	Great Commercial Delivery	Working more collaboratively including on digital and data
Pillar Three	Growth	Driving Economic Growth	Being innovative and ambitious in pursuit of economic growth

4. How we will Deliver

Our Strategy provides a strong collective ambition for the entire Function, creating a common and binding vision, for each of the three areas above. We are committed to drawing our diverse priorities, experience and skillsets closer together, collectively creating value for the nation through focus on three pillars:

Pillar One - People: A capable, inspired workforce whose talent is nurtured

Why this is important

Our people are front and centre of all we do. The successful delivery of our commercial work is entirely dependent on the performance of our workforce. We owe it to them therefore to provide them with an exceptional career experience, not only ensuring they receive the right training to do their jobs well, but that they get the best possible career experience through an ambitious mobility, wellbeing, pay and diversity offer. We are determined to create an exceptional carrier experience to set a high bar.

What we will deliver by Mar 2029 or sooner

What the future should look like: GCF members will experience an exceptional career experience, with a clear yet flexible career path progression through enhanced mobility across the Function and a culture that values innovation and diversity.

We have listened to our staff: We will create clear yet flexible career paths to cater to diverse aspirations and strategically manage the workforce through baselining capability and mobility priorities. This is in direct response to feedback, addressing concerns on restricted mobility across the GCF. The strategy seeks to create a culture that values innovation and diversity and has “the right people at the right time with the right skills.”

We will deliver this through two principal objectives:

Objective 1. Broaden the Capability offer

Increase and diversify the GCF commercial capability offer through targeted training and secondments, specifically embedding digital and AI fluency to meet evolving challenges.

Objective 2. Manage our workforce strategically

To meet the needs of the business by ensuring we have the right fundamentals baselining our capability and mobility priorities: Right people, right time, right skills.

We will realise these objectives through delivering the following:

• Cross-Functional talent: Shifting to a view of talent that emphasises mobility and career progression across different departments.
• Standardised HR offer: Developing a “People Plan” that includes a standardised HR offer, including an ambitious and evolving capability offer, including on data and digital commercial/procurement needs, workforce planning, and clear career paths for both ambitious and steady-state employees.
• Blueprints: Using departmental “blueprints” to understand and plan resource requirements, capability and wider training needs and best practice.
• Strategic workforce planning: To support general capability planning and talent mobility across the Function.

What we will deliver in year one and beyond:

We will deliver the following as a first step towards fulfilling our objectives and overarching outcome. Measuring and monitoring is covered in the sections below. Once these have been realised further deliverables in year 2 and year 3 will seek to incrementally build on progress towards fulfilling the outcome.

Revised L&D offer: Identify and agree a revised L&D offer which ensures a future-ready blend of digital, AI, and core commercial skills that align with evolving business requirements (e.g. leadership capability, alternative commercial models and non-commercial skills training).

Commercial Digital Capability Board established: Board to evaluate need, then design and roll-out bespoke digital procurement training across GCF commercial teams.

Functional Blueprint 2.0: Reconfigure our blueprints to provide the baseline for the development of our first ever GCO future workforce plan.

‘Functional Talent Mobilisation’ approach: Create and implement policies and supporting processes that enable staff to transition readily between roles; balancing local knowledge, diversifying commercial experience and targeting our greatest Functional priorities with the right and expertise available.’

Pillar 2 - Digital: Great commercial delivery

Why this is important

The Government Commercial Function is by nature outward facing needs to deliver for its customer. It is therefore vital that we do this is the best, most efficient and most innovative way we can to satisfy those customer needs and fulfil our obligations across the Function. In designing our strategy we have sought feedback from our customers as well as internally. We see the need to be better, ambitious and diverse in our offer. We should be “commercial”: encompassing revenue-generating and savings-generating as well as procurement focused.

What we will deliver by March 2029 or sooner

What the future should look like: Our ways of working are efficient, digitally enabled and customer centric, delivering great commercial outcomes and value for the nation.

Our two principal objectives are:

Objective 1: Harness Collective Commercial Expertise

Achieve greater overall benefits and efficiencies through creation of joined up, cross HMG category strategies and data and insight enabled communities of practice for all common goods, services and suppliers. Using shared and integrated platforms to effect coordinated management of commercial performance.

This builds on existing initiatives such as assisted procurement for commodity purchases with the goal of fostering a “single mind” approach to what is bought and the commercial value generated. The expertise and experience within the Complex Transactions Team, now part of the GCA, is an important resource which we will  seek to increase in size during this strategy period so that the team can provide targeted expert commercial support across all Government Department Commercial Teams.

Objective 2: Simplify and standardise ways of working to enable digitisation

Creating measurable efficiency through: interoperability of systems, leveraging AI, streamlining and delivering faster procurement and commercial processes. Promoting excellent sourcing, contract and supplier management throughout the contract lifecycle and using data to enable decision-enhancing insight.

This has been designed to equip people with the right tools, providing some standardisation, generating value faster.

We will realise these objectives through delivering the following:

• Standardisation: Moving away from “procurement” terminology toward a “commercial” lifecycle. The goal is to standardise processes and tools to make them “frictionless” for customers.
• Digital & AI: Emphasising the use of AI as an enabler and focusing on harmonising data rather than overhauling entire systems.
• Communities of Practice (CoP): Establishing CoPs for the top 10 spend categories to create unified category strategies.

What we will deliver in year one and beyond

We will deliver the following as a first step towards fulfilling our objectives and overarching outcome. Measuring and monitoring is covered in the sections below. New deliverables once these have been realised will seek to incrementally build on progress towards fulfilling the outcome:

Top ten category delivery plan and pilots: We have created a top ten list of categories, each with a plan and  owner so that at the end of Year One, we can have clear deliverables signed off and pilots underway.

Self-service and assisted buying offer: GCA in collaboration with wider Function to finalise design and begin implementation of a fit for purpose assisted buying and self-service offer which is consistent and deliverable to customers.

Ways of working: Identify where we could gain the best value from standardising ways of working across the Function eg. via an enhanced Functional Reference Model; commercial policy, processes and data standards; enhancing data quality and reducing duplication.

GCF Collaboration Platform: Implementation of a new platform that enables effective collaboration across the GCF.

AI Tools: Development and implementation of 6 AI tools across the Function identified from the 21 use cases currently being validated by the AI Working Group.

Pillar 3 - Growth: Driving economic growth

Why this is important

The Commercial Function has a key role in delivering the government’s agenda and missions. Driving economic growth is the Government’s top priority and as its Commercial Function this priority must shape the core of all our activity. This means we must push for innovation, a challenge in government due to regulation and little reward. We must champion diversity and innovation in developing markets in order to diversity supply chains for highly critical services. The Function must be outward looking; aware that its role extends beyond its primary remit to supporting SMEs and VCSEs, supply chain development and market diversity.

What we will deliver by March 2029 or sooner

What the future should look like: Utilising innovation in procurement and commercial practices (eg market shaping and making) as a catalyst for economic growth. Collaborate to eg: increase supply chain resilience; capitalise on Government’s industrial strategy targets to create UK jobs; utilise Social Value Levers and increase spend with SMEs.

Our two principal objectives are:

Objective 1: Commercial innovation and social value as catalyst for growth

Driving economic growth through working collaboratively across the Function to embed a ‘pro-innovation mindset’ (defining challenges to solve rather than solutions to buy) and engaging early with the market to consider innovative solutions. Make every pound spent contribute to increasing economic growth by using social value to create jobs, skills and opportunities in local communities.

Objective 2: Increase domestic supply chain diversity, sustainability and resilience

Make and shape markets (using “whole of government” buying power and wider commercial activity to shape markets for common goods and services) and increase spend with SMEs to increase domestic supply chain resilience, sustainability and diversity. Mitigate risk throughout the supply chain via rigorous focus on prime contractors and their wider supply base, conducting all market activities in a transparent manner

We will realise these objectives through:

• Market shaping and making: Using the collective buying power of government to drive UK economic growth and resilience.
• Risk management: Creating a Strategic Risk Register to gain visibility into secondary and tertiary supply chain risks, particularly around cyber and financial stability.

What we will deliver in year one and beyond

We will deliver the following as a first step towards fulfilling our objectives and overarching outcome. Measuring and monitoring is covered in the sections below. New deliverables once these have been realised will seek to incrementally build on progress towards fulfilling the outcome.

Market shaping/ making: Work with Commercial Directors in four pilot sectors (Shipbuilding, Steel, AI and Energy Infrastructure) to identify key data requirements, pilot underpinning market shaping assessment for each and assess use of National Security Exemptions in key areas to enable Departments to develop commercial strategies that are more aligned with the Industrial Strategy and help drive economic growth in those sectors with innovative commercial strategies – for example, Advanced Market Commitments.

GCF risk mitigation plan: Develop our first ever Function-wide risk matrix identifying key supply chain risks, which allows the Function to: define, understand and implement mitigation plans at a Functional level; and map critical dependencies across the Function, beyond prime contractors; in order to be able to proactively manage risk.

Increased SME/VCSE spend: Departments to set and publish stretching (3yr) SME/ (2yr) VCSE spend targets and action plans, and report progress annually.

5. How we will measure success

The Strategy will be monitored on a year on year basis (performance reports received quarterly. Using comparative data insights and feedback from stakeholders, we will monitor the Strategy delivery.

Targets will be shared and strategic milestones will support the quantifiable benefits of the three strategic outcomes.

Communicating progress and success

To support the successful delivery of the GCF Strategy, communication will be increased across the Function to share the Strategy progress. This will be done via various channels already in place. For example, The Strategy Hub will utilise existing newsletters as these reach the 6,000 strong GCF. Creating a hub on the collaboration platform for colleagues to self-serve progress updates and meeting records.

Sharing success

A GCF Annual Report will be delivered in Q1 of the following financial year detailing progress against the Strategy on a year on year basis. This document will be outward facing and can be accessed by the public.

6. Leadership and Governance

In order to comprehensively oversee this ambitious approach, we have convened a new Executive Committee (ExCo). ExCo will be responsible for monitoring the delivery of yearly targets, risk management and ensuring the strategy remains on course to realise high-level benefits. The ExCo will have a wider role and approach:

• Function first: It will champion and publicise collective Functional goals over individual departmental needs to increase the Function’s overall leverage across government.
• Accountability: The group will act as a central leadership body, setting priorities, managing strategic risks (like headcount reductions), and holding each other accountable for delivery.
• Decision-making: The ExCo will meet regularly to act as the primary decision-making body for the Function, utilising existing fora like the Commercial Future Leaders’ Group for broader communication.